Residual Feelings
by crackers4jenn
Summary: A coda to Aliens in a Spaceship. Brennan, Hodgins, Booth, Angela.


**I**

There's three swift raps against the outer glass of her office. Brennan looks up, away from the computer.

"Hey," he says, a silhouette leaning against the door frame.

Her chair swivels slightly.

"Hodgins. Is there a problem?"

"Nope, no problem."

He walks in, like he's wandered there, hands in his lab coat pockets, his mood casual.

"Have you gotten any further on identifying those stray particulates from-"

"No work," he cuts her off. "I don't want to talk work."

Wary, she says, "Okay."

Hodgins floats a hand over the file case on her desk. The Grave Digger. Everything they know about him, it's contained in a simple manila file. Condensed to pages.

"Can I ask you something?" Hodgins says, and Brennan gives him her undivided attention.

"Sure. Even though, logically speaking, you want to ask me several somethings, since asking if you can ask me something is already-" Right, sometimes clarifications are unnecessary. "Never mind. What's the question?"

He's smiling, but it falls. "That day. You ever, you know. I don't know. Think about it?"

Being buried alive is not something one exactly eradicates from their memory.

She pulls up the dental records of a ten-year old boy who currently resides at the Jeffersonian. They'd found his mostly decomposed body at the bottom of a sewage drain. No identification yet.

Hodgins pivots and walks aimlessly around her office, and she tells him, eyes back on the computer, "I don't dwell."

"Well, yeah. Dwelling. So beneath us. What those scary, average folks do, with their mortal-sized brains and lower tolerance for heart-pounding fear."

The boy has injuries inconsistent with an accident. Where they found him indicates that it wasn't a natural death, either.

Brennan shrugs, tells Hodgins, "It's a normal reaction."

"Ah, but we're not normal."

"Objectively speaking," she looks up from her work, "I guess not."

"So here's the funny part. And I mean that in every twisted, ironic sense of the word, however you want to take it." He lets that sink in the space between them, heavy like it's weighted to them both, before, "I can't stop thinking about that day. Those hours. Being in that car."

"I know." Her voice is soft, compassionate.

"Do you?"

"I know that, in life or death experiences, usually there's subsequent-"

He cuts her off with a short, breathed out noise of disbelief. "So you're talking empathetically, here? Not, like, person-to-person, survivor-to-survivor, you're giving me the back-of-a-brochure talk."

"No! Of course not. I'm simply saying-"

He moves forward-_propels_ is more accurate, then, with his fingers splayed across her desk, wide and long, he leans towards her. There's still some of his own dried blood caked beneath the nails.

"You and me, we were assaulted, kidnapped, and buried underground. Alive. We had a time-stamp of twelve hours attached to our lives. The clock ticked, air went vaminos. That doesn't keep you awake at night?"

It's a challenge. He's trying to assert himself as the alpha male. To instill dominance in a situation he feels submissive to.

She says, her breath hitching, "Those are the facts, as they happened. I acknowledge them."

"Fine." He taps his fingers twice and straightens. "You know what, you're right anyway. I've got particulates."

He leaves with a bitterly pronounced, "_Dr. Brennan_," and it sounds like a parting shot.

* * *

**II**

Angela's watching Hodgins with something like scrutiny of the nonjudgmental variety. He's all wound up, which means, because he's Hodgins, he's just being really passive aggressive.

"You don't have to be so... _grrr_," she tells him.

He barely looks up from his microscope, but his mouth twists up just so. "Grrr?"

"Fine, upset. There, a real word, with an even realer meaning. She's just... she's Brennan. She feels things differently."

"Robotically," he mutters.

She shoots him a dark look. One he'd catch if he were paying her any real attention. "You know that's not true. She's just very... anthropological about it."

With irony, he repeats, "Robotic."

"Different," she emphasizes, but then her sternness fades, sliding into something low and sultry. "You know I'm here if you want to talk. What do ya say? Some wine, a little music, the natural erotic atmosphere that exists when you mix those two things together..."

Hodgins turns himself around, leans against his work station with his elbows on the desk. "I'm not saying no. Because, shoot me if that ever happens. And talking to you is... amazing."

"But..."

"What it was like... I can't _convey_ that." With absolutely no malice, he tells her, "You weren't there."

Angela squeezes his shoulder before walking away.

"I know."

* * *

**III**

"Would ya cut the guy a break already?"

Booth jumps right in while Brennan is mid-sip, their lunch on the table between them. She sets her coffee down, rubs sandwich crumbs off her hands.

"Who?" she asks, grabbing a napkin she uses to dab at her mouth. "There's a guy? You realize when you start a conversation off like that, the only one who knows what you're talking about, is you. Linguistically speaking-"

"Okay, see, you breaking out the 'linguistically speaking'? Not happening. Hodgins, Bones!" He thunks her on the forehead with a goofy smile, like he thinks he's being funny. "I'm talking Hodgins."

"Oh."

"He's walking around like a lost dog without a leash."

She wraps her fingers around the coffee mug, pulls it close. "That's... an unfair comparison."

"You know what I mean. He wants to talk about, you know..."

"The Grave Digger?"

"In a sense, sure. Go with that. He wants to talk about the Grave Digger, and he wants you to two to get all... talk-y together."

"Did you just say 'talk-y'? You know that's not a real word, right?"

"Would it kill you to focus?"

"I'm focusing! Obviously, or else I wouldn't have been able to correct your incorrect use of vocabulary."

"Look, two people share something that no one else has, that means they have a connection."

"From a purely romantic sense. In tense situations, adrenaline exacerbates fear-"

"Could you not? Could we have one conversation where you try to pretend you're one of us?"

"One of what?"

"Humans. People. Not robots."

"I'm sorry, it's just. What Hodgins is going through is a very normal process. We shouldn't walk on broken eggs around him."

"Egg shells. It's egg shells, Bones, not..." His eyes fall shut briefly, then flutter open. "Never mind. Not the point."

"I'm only saying, he shouldn't be treated any differently. His behavior, his emotions, it all makes a rational kind of sense."

"Question is, why aren't _you_ going through those very same _rational_ emotions?"

She sits back, drawing out their distance.

"Because. I recognize the symptoms. There's a physiological response, and in time, the nightmares will go away. The rapid pulse. The illogical, though completely valid related fear."

His eyes widen. His voice drops low. "You have nightmares about it?"

"Well, yeah. I was buried alive, Booth. I'm not a robot." He's giving her a look. "I'm not."

"I know. So just talk to him."

"Why? What good does talking do? Does it make the fact that it happened go away? Does it erase those twelve hours?"

"It makes you human. Okay?"

* * *

**IIII**

Brennan places a bottle of wine in front of Hodgins, interrupting him from his microscope work. All very pointedly. Sort of robotically, even.

_Do not say it, man. Do not say it. This is your boss._

"Dr. Brennan. Are you _propositioning_ me?"

Niiiice.

Brennan looks befuddled. Which is better than outraged. Befuddled doesn't get him fired or labeled the office pervert.

"What?" she says, like she's shuffling through an internal database and _propositioning_ is flashing up false. "No. I'm extending, to you, an offer. To talk."

"With wine."

"No. Well, yes. Technically, that is a bottle of wine."

He scoots off the stool, moves past her with the wine in his hand to his desk. "You said you want to talk? Spotlight's on you, Anna Pavlova."

She turns to watch him, eyes on his. "I was told recently that, in these kind of specific circumstances-"

"Specifically what kind?"

"Life or death."

"You know, there's a _really_ morbid Hallmark greeting in there somewhere. Someone should get on that."

He pops open the wine bottle with a corkscrew found in the third drawer down.

Brennan says, "You keep a bottle opener in your desk?"

He flips it around, showing it off. "Swiss Army knife. If anyone ever asks, I very emphatically was _not_ a Boy Scout. Except I was. Ten years old, and all I wanted to do was sift through and classify _dirt_."

"You said you don't like that word."

"Not when I was ten. I've had this," he holds the pocket knife up, "ever since."

"You must've been a proficient Boy Scout."

"You bet I was."

Finding a couple of paper cups, Hodgins pours two drinks while Brennan joins him. He hands her the lesser filled, then eases onto his desk so he's half-standing, half-sitting. Mostly leaning. Brennan copies his movement, so he pushes some papers out of the way to clear the space for her. She sits and their knees touch, angled inwards.

He holds his cup up for a toast, cheesy as all get-out, but cathartic too. "To the future."

She bumps her drink to his, lips twisting into a smile. "To being alive."

"Nice," he breathes out appreciatively, then downs his share. And, man, it is not good. He makes a face. "Oh, that's sick."

"That's because you're supposed to-" She demonstrates first, then explains, "Sip. See?" She does it again. "Sip."

He laughs, short and loud. "I got it," he pours himself another drink, fills it up half-way. "It's about taste, not who can get wasted the fastest. You'd so lose that."

"What? I would not."

"I'm thinkin' you would. I've got the constitution of a sailor."

"As do I. I have an exceptionally high tolerance to alcohol."

"That," he chuckles, full of awe, "is so hot."

Brennan gives him a wide smile. She looks amused as she takes a sip, then notes, like she's speaking into a tape recorder, "You're impressed."

Emphatic in his denial, Hodgins lays a hand on Brennan's knee. It actually stays there for a long four seconds while he tells her, "That was uber-levels of platonic. Trust me. In its every definition. I mean, _obviously_ you're attractive-you're insanely beautiful-what I mean is, you're my boss. And I don't ever-it's not like I _think_ about you, 'cause-_wrong_-I wouldn't-oh god, this is getting worse."

She places her hand over his, friendly. Even gives it a squeeze. "It's _fine_. I understood, completely."

"You did? Good. That's great. Because misunderstandings... that could lead to-"

All of a sudden, his head is filled with plenty of pretty visuals of what a misunderstanding could lead to. Lots and lots of pretty painted visuals, and his eyes go wide. There might've even been an audible, super dramatic gulp. You know, normal reactions.

He pulls his hand out from beneath hers with a high, slightly hysteric laugh. Dr. Brennan is gorgeous. Of course she is. She's every geek's fantasy, with bonus brains to boot. But she's Dr. Brennan, and-oh, they do not do that. Sex. Or anything close to it. And this line of thinking is morally, irrefutably-

"Wrong!" he blurts out, and her face draws in (that would be confusion), then softens (there's the amusement at his behalf). He says, not so convincingly, "Misunderstandings are... _so wrong_."

"You bragged you could handle alcohol." Her eyes narrow into pleased, scarily skeptical slits. "Clearly you can't. Are you _drunk_?"

"What?" he scoffs, chest puffed out, because she's, what? That's legitimately her questioning his manhood, right? "No! Please. Drunk? On a micro-sized cup of wine? Dr. Brennan, c'mon."

Teasing, leaning in, she says, "You act it."

Dr. Brennan doesn't do-this. The jokes and the casual sitting and the wine. She's actually pretty dictatorial. Robotic was a good word. Apt.

Hodgins clears his throat, sips at his wine. Yeah, this stuff still tastes like crap no matter the method.

With absolutely no build, Brennan leaps back in. "Residual feelings about safety, purpose, our own mortality... that's all common after a life or death situation."

"I know."

"I don't _do_ psychology. I don't believe in it. But I believe that, as humans, when we go through a traumatic experience-"

"They pulled us out of _gravel_. C'mon!"

"It alters our perception of the world. We see things differently. Feel things. And sharing that experience with someone..."

Hodgins' smile is wry, and he holds up his cup again. "Bonded, baby."

Brennan matches his smile, taps his cup with hers.

"Bonded," she says.

**THE END**


End file.
